Lantern and exterior chancel wall at Old South Church in Boston.

A c. 1882 engraving of Old South Church in Boston.

The Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Massachusetts.

Charles Amos Cummings (1823–1911), prominent nineteenth century American architect and architectural historian who worked primarily in the Venetian Gothic style. Cummings followed the precepts of British cultural theorist and architectural critic John Ruskin (1819–1900). Cummings help to found The Boston Society of Architects in 1867. Northwest corner of Copley Square showing Charles Follen McKims Boston Public Library on the left, and Chalres Amos Cummings Old South Church to the right. ... Download high resolution version (814x700, 65 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Download high resolution version (814x700, 65 KB) Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... Upper: Steel-plate engraving of Ruskin as a young man, made circa 1845, scanned from print made circa 1895. ...

Biography

Born in Boston, Cummings was educated in the Boston Public Schools. Cummings graduated from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. Returning to Boston, Cummings joined the office of Gridley Bryant, where he met Willard T. Sears. In 1861 the two left Bryant's office to form their own architectural studio, Cummings and Sears. Cummings travelled extensively in Europe, primarily Italy. Travel, and writing about Italian architecture informed his own work, and while a part of the larger Gothic Revival syle Cummings, and his partner Sears, can not be seen as academic revivalists. They began to express a more contemporary, American architectural voice much in the way Henry Hobson Richardson did with the Romanesque vernacular. Two early projects of the firm, Brechin Hall built in 1861, and Stone Chapel built in 1867 both at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts brought positive notice, and increased commissions to the firm. The office designed the massive brick Boston Cyclorama built to exhibit a large cyclical mural The Battle of Gettysburg, today it houses the Boston Center for the Arts. In 1872 the firm designed a large Stick Style residence at 121 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston's Back Bay, and the smaller but significant Pratt House in Forest Hills, also in the Stick Style. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, or RPI, is a coeducational private university in Troy, New York, near Albany, founded in 1824 by Stephen Van Rensselaer. ... Gridley Bryant (1789 – June 13, 1867) was an American construction engineer who ended up building one of the first railroads in the country and inventing most of the basic technologies involved in it. ... Henry Hobson Richardson, portrait by Sir Hubert von Herkomer Trinity Church in Boston is one of Richardsons most famous works. ... The Buttermans, the historic home of John Newman, the butter king, is one of several Queen Anne mansions in Elgin, Illinois The Queen Anne style of British and American architecture reached its greatest popularity in the last quarter of the 19th century, manifesting itself in a number of different ways...

Following Boston's Great Fire of 1872, the firm was enlisted in the reconstruction of many downtown buildings. A significant part of Cummings and Sears practice focused on ecclesiastical architecture, building churches thoughout Massachusetts and northern New England. In 1874 Cummings was commissioned to design what is considered his masterwork, a new building for the third oldest congregation in America, Old South Church in Boston located in Boston's Copley Square. Northwest corner of Copley Square showing Charles Follen McKims Boston Public Library on the left, and Chalres Amos Cummings Old South Church to the right. ... Categories: Stub | Boston ...

Cummings continued to work, almost until his own death in 1911. His last major commission was the design of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, Massachusetts. The monumnet took the form of a 220' tower, built as an Italian campanile.The monument was dedicated in 1908 by Theodore Roosevelt. St. ...

Cummings collected a vast number of mediaeval sculptures, and on his death bequeathed the collection to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, also funding the Charles Amos Cummings Bequest Fund for the collection and care of ancient sculpture for the museum. Paul Gauguin, Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? (Doù venons-nous? Que faisons-nous? Où allons-nous?) (1897). ...

Publishing

Cummings wrote several treatises on Italian architecture. In 1901 he published his largest work A history of architecture in Italy from the time of Constantine to the dawn of the renaissance with over 500 illustrations. In the same year, with Russell Sturgis, he published the Dictionary of Architecture and Building, which became a standard architectural text book. Russell Sturgis (October 16, 1836 - February 11, 1909), United States architect and art critic, was born in Baltimore County, Maryland. ...

References

• Aldrich, Megan. Gothic Revival. Phaidon Press Ltd: 1994. ISBN 0-7148-2886-6.
• Bunting, Bainbridge. Houses of Boston's Back Bay: An Architectural History, 1840-1917. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press: 1967. ISBN 0-6744-0901-9.
• Michels, Eileen. "Late Nineteenth-Century Published American Perspective Drawing." Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. 31.4 (1972): 291-308. The article contains a drawing of the Stick Style Pratt House in Forest Hills, MA by Cummings and Sears.
• Placzek, Adolf K. Macmillan. Encyclopedia of Architects. 4 vols. Free Press: 1982. ISBN 0-0292-5000-5.
• Withey, Henry F. Biographical Dictionary of American Architects (Deceased). Hennessey & Ingalls: 1970.

External links

• High Victorian Gothic architecture in America
• Site of Old South Church in Boston
• Site of The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
• Site of the Pilgrim Monument
• Architectural history of The Boston Center for the Arts' Cyclorama building
• Boston history and architecture
• Site of The Boston Society of Architects